CNAMEs are handled very weird - please change this
The implementation of CNAMEs are done in a really weird way.
1) If the agency choose to have the website too, the agency is forced to have the main domain as THE domain, e.g. "mydomain.com", that is so much 201x . There are very good reasons to not do it that way, so stop forcing agencies to have the main domain like that. It should be up to the agency to decide whether they want "www.mydomain.com", "mydomain.com" or e.g. "myreviewsystem.mydomain.com".
2) Now it is recommended to set one more A record in the DNS for a sublevel domain, e.g. "www" which is supposed to be the same as the main domain. So in reality there are two A records. This is not the way to do it, or at least enable the ability to do it the way it should be (and right now you seem to check whether the sublevel domain is really an A record, which is odd). The way to do it is that only ONE A record is set in the DNS, then any other sublevel domains referring to the same address, should be defined with a CNAME pointing to the main domain, so e.g. "www.mydomain.com" should have a CNAME set to "mydomain.com", NOT have two DNS A records with the IP addresses like it is now.
3) Finally, and this is also very important... If the website option is not used so only the CNAME is set to point out the application, it points out your domain "app.embedreviews.com", which s ssuper easy to find out by just doing an nslookup to see how a certain CNAME is defined. This means that your white label in reality is NOT fully white labeled.
Instead, I suggest that you have an unidentifiable domain where you place the app and then point to that. It would be even better if you also placed the domain name contacts behind a so called name proxy which is the standard these days for many domain name providers.
So in this case, the CNAME could be set to point out e.g. "[agency-selected-name].hhhsj72729.com" and then have a page on "hhhsj72729.com" that does NOT redirect to embedmyreviews.com, but instead responds with a blank page.
I am surprised that it works the way it does today when everything else has been implemented with agencies in mind.
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Comments10
Salman Farish
May 8, 2024
Much needed feature request specially the third one.
Current setup is not a complete white label.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 9, 2024
Just use the A record if this is a big concern. Nothing leaks to a browser but this concern about someone doing DNS lookups for me feels like being paranoid.
The focus here should be features and as long as the platform is not leaking our branding to customers via the browser, widgets, emails or SMS then for me that is good enough.
[Deleted User]
May 10, 2024
Yes, you are right. If the A record is set and doing a reverse lookup on it, it translates to "http://216.0.13.49.clients.your-server.de".
Isn't this a feature? I thought you valued input from your customers no matter the type of input that would help you improve the service. I have repeatedly told you in the chat what a great job you have done creating this service, but that doesn't mean that it is to perfection YET.
Still a great service.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 10, 2024
Sorry if it came across like that it is not my intention. All feedback is welcome. But I have to be careful on what features we build and what we don't. Not every suggestion will be implemented as I need to be careful on what feature brings the most value. Ideally we have everything but value, time, complexity and maintenance cost all need to be taken into account for each request.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 9, 2024
So this has been discussed before it's not something we will work on.
You are free to setup the domains as you like the wizard is for the vast majority of our users who want to either use the website + application or just application.
Now in regards to the platform not being a complete white-label well this can still be figured out even if you use the A record. Someone intent on finding out who has the technical expertise will still find out what the platform is.
Having additional domains in-between will cause additional hops.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 9, 2024
Just to add to this before we had it without the wizard and we used to get a huge amount of chat support requests. This was a real pain hence introducing the wizard. Now customers can choose between two flows.
If you don't want to use the CNAME just use the A record and be done.
[Deleted User]
May 10, 2024
I never said anything about having an additional name in-between. I suggested using a name that can't be referred back to embedmyreviews.com like it is now. NO, it will not be "another hop". That doesn't happen within a DNS. Hops occur when the traffic is hopping from one host to another.
Everything within a DNS does not cause any additional hops.
Well, I first tried to use a CNAME pointing to the A-record but it appears that you are checking whether there really is an A record or not. It didn't work for me, but after I changed the CNAME to an A record as suggested by the wizard, it worked.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 10, 2024
Yes you are right I have read point 2 again. And that is the correct approach. Sorry I'm a bit tired this week we have been getting DDOS attacked.
I'll reopen this task and work on it in the next week.
Patrick
May 13, 2024
I would agree that this would be nice to have, but I know EMB is a small team & I would prioritize other features over this one that matter to my clients. 99% of clients are too busy to do a reverse DNS lookup.
Eventually, it would be nice to have it be 100% white-labelled, but I don't foresee it being an issue. If someone asks if I'm white-labelling the product, I respond with "I've partnered with the developer to offer it to my customers. We work closely to develop new features..." etc.
mannie@embedmyreviews.com
May 23, 2024
Just an update to this:
The domain setup process has been changed to work as suggested in this ticket. We have also fixed the domain verification process and added an option to go through the verification process again via the domain page (helpful if DNS propagation is taking sometime) as well as some other fixes.
I will mark this task as completed as I think since we no longer require the embedmyreviews.com subdomain it is no longer an issue.